Integration & asylum policies since 2015 and their unintended consequences. Interview offer with Dr Veronica Ferreri

Dr Veronica Ferreri from Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient in Berlin, works at the intersection of Social Anthropology and Diaspora/Migration Studies. Her work focuses on the Middle East and the Arab diaspora in Europe. Till last year, she was a researcher in the BMBF-project “Normality and Crisis: Memories of Everyday Life in Syria as a Chance for a New Start in Germany”. Her PhD was awarded the Leigh Douglas Memorial Prize by the British Society for Middle Eastern Studies. Her study “A State of Permanent Loss: War and Displacement in Syria and Lebanon” questions the nature of the Syrian predicament in Lebanon.

Veronica Ferreri has done long-term fieldwork in Lebanon during the so-called “Syrian refugee crisis” and its aftermath. Her work captures the everyday life of a Syrian community in Lebanese exile and discovers the community’s creation of new concepts to deal with the defeat and failure of the Syrian revolution and the community’s dispossession during the war.

Another strand of her work examines Syrians’ discourses on law, bureaucracy and documents between Syria, Lebanon and Europe/Germany. Part of this work is published in her ZMO working paper “The wondrous life of legal documents: transformations and continuities in the encounter of Syrian documents with German bureaucracy” that reflects on the limits of studying German asylum and integration from within.

In a forthcoming article, she argues that the lawful production of legality in Germany can only be achieved through legally ambiguous, if not so-called illegal, practices in Syria.

Possible interview topics:
- Integration and asylum policies in Germany – citizenship regime, integration course and bureaucracy with regards to the Syrian asylum.
- War, political violence and solidarity in relation to Syria and Lebanon.
- Humanitarianism, displacement, hospitality.
- Revolution and the aftermath in relation to political commitment and social relations as well as dispossession and defeat.
- Legal documents and bureaucratic practices as well as life cycle events in relation to Syria, Lebanon and Germany.

Please send request to presse@zmo.de

Weitere Informationen:
http://www.zmo.de Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient
http://www.zmo.de/en/research/supplementary-research/normality-and-crisis Memories of Everyday Life in Syria as a Chance for a New Start in Germany
http://www.zmo.de/fileadmin/Inhalte/Publikationen/PDFs/workingpapers/zmo_working_paper_31_2022_ferreri.pdf Working Paper V. Ferreri